I try to honor my time spent playing while also acknowledging I played too much of it at the expense of more important things in my life.

The main thing I have from that time is several large boxes hanging about taking up shelf space and a burning hatred of MMOs. My wife and I got into WoW during late Vanilla. We stood in line at midnight to get the collector’s edition box for WotLK and later again for Cataclysm (we weren’t that far gone when The Burning Crusade released). Shortly after Cataclysm released, there was the Midsummer Fire Festival and as we were playing through it, we hit that wall where any more quests became locked behind “Do these daily quests 10,000 times to progress” and the whole suspension of disbelief just came crashing down. I had already hated daily quests and the grindy elements of the game, but at that moment I just said, “fuck this” and walked away from the game.

I do look back fondly on some of the good times we had in the game. Certainly in Vanilla there was some amazing writing and world crafting. We met some good people and had a lot of fun over the years and I don’t regret the time or money spent. However, one thing it taught me is just how pointless MMOs are. They are specifically designed to be endless treadmills. And this can be OK, so long as the treadmill itself is well designed and fun. But, so many of the elements exist just to eat time. Instead of being fun, they suck the fun out of the game and turn it into a job.

We even tried a few other MMOs after that point (e.g. Star Wars) just because we wanted something to fill that niche in our gaming time. But invariably, there would be the grind mechanics which ruined the game for us. Or worse yet, pay to win mechanics where the game would literally dangle offers of “pay $X to shortcut this pointless grind” (ESO pops to mind for this). If the game is offering me ways to pay money to not play the game, then I’ll take the easier route and not play the game at all, thank you very much.

So ya, WoW taught me to hate MMOs and grinding in games. And that’s good, I guess.

Well I occasionally have the impulse to tell my coworkers “That’s Minus Fifty DKP!” but aside from that, I dunno maybe there’s something to be said about just knowing your role, doing your job right, and assuming you don’t need to micromanage everyone else.

I would like to start again but just don’t have the time anymore. Fuck retail tho

I left because of things the company was doing. I liked being part of a community that aligned with my interests.

I miss being able to play with people like that. The challenge of raids were fun and I took a lot of pride in the progress we were making.

Honestly it’s been lonely. I’ve tried to play other games with people but it felt disconnected and eventually I walked away from that and only played single player games.

I had fun, probably should have touched grass a few times, but it was my only escape from shitty childhood circumstances. The game I grew up with is long dead and going back won’t bring the fun back(i tried).

It taught me to use home row touch typing. Before that I was fast enough at search and peck that I didn’t see the point of home row. But when you’re chit chatting in the heat of battle you don’t have time for that shit.

I played FFXI and my wife played PSO. The mathematical approach I took has helped me in other games since then but I haven’t played another MMO. We’ve talked about picking a new one to play together but haven’t yet. I am torn, I don’t want to get that far in again.

WOW helped me learn to cope with a lot of the social anxiety issues I have. I went from just doing shit by myself and not talking to anyone and being timid about getting on the mic to eventually getting running raid groups and getting elected to take over as GM of the 60+ member guild I was in.

Yes, I was way too addicted to it for a long time but a big part of that through the middle to the end of my time playing it was the socialization factor. It was a “safe” means of interacting with people and just have conversations where it was easy to escape or stand up for yourself if someone was an asshole. Unlike public school where I had to worry about physical violence so I avoided people as much as possible except my small friend group. I learned to talk to people and banter. I learned how to manage conflicts and organize events. I learned how to have constructive conversations with people who were falling short in raids. All these things which I was able to bring into real life. It also gave me more opportunities to talk to women platonically which I think contributed to me not becoming an incel because I definitely fit the demo of someone that should have happened to.

As I got more confident I eventually got a job and started doing more stuff in real life and that got me off WOW and video games as a whole are a much smaller part of my life now. Would it have been better to go to therapy? Maybe, but I didn’t know where to begin with that. I really don’t think I’d have turned out as well as I did without that game.

I didn’t play myself but my sister was into it. She was kinda into it because her boyfriend was. She still games but isn’t into WOW anymore.

I have some friends that are and they seem pretty pleased with the new Fellowship game

No WoW specifically, never played it, but Runescape had that GRIP on my psyche whenever I was younger. Late nights staying up to make sure I was still AFK skilling.

Now, it seems so dumb to spend so much money on a game that I basically played alone because CoD was the style at the time (and I guess still is), especially since it doesn’t feel like I gained anything from it other than a love of the game and its style.

I had fun though, so I guess it wasn’t all in vain?

Played from a friends and family alpha (October 2003) until 2021, a little before the big scandals started hitting the public. Rather ironic that the mediocre state of the game and not the nightmare culture is what drove me away.

I think about the good times only when I see it in the news for whatever new expansion they’re pushing. I was in the same guild for almost the entire time, and stay in contact with a handful of them.

Other than that, just a forgotten relic.

I don’t think it does, or at least not much. I quit before BC, the started working in the games industry years later and had to pick it back up. Quit before the panda thing (I forget precisely when).

I have good memories of playing it with coworkers and friends. I don’t think about it these days at all (and fuck blizzard, honestly).

That job had me play lots of MMOs (I worked at one of the community/fan/tools sites (we did not allow account/gold sales, botting discussion/links. Etc)) and eventually I burnt out on them pretty hard. Single player RPGs are more my jam these days

points to username

I started playing fellowship. So now, that part of my life has become years of experience to pick up a new game fluidly and have fun with it